Put on your thinking caps for this one as it requires a bit of brain power. It seems as though IQ tests scores have been steadily rising during the last several decades in every industrialized country on earth. Are people getting smarter? Is our education system improved? Do kids study more? No! One researcher believes that life, and video games in particular, better prepares us for IQ tests now:

“Over the last 50 years, weve had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media – interactive visual media in particular – poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of the new interface, follow clues, sense relationships. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the very skills that the Ravens tests measure – you survey a field of visual icons and look for unusual patterns.”

“The best example of brain-boosting media may be videogames. Mastering visual puzzles is the whole point of the exercise – whether its the spatial geometry of Tetris, the engineering riddles of Myst, or the urban mapping of Grand Theft Auto.”

You can read the entire (and very interesting) article in Issue 13.05 of Wired

Link found via BoingBoing as usual 🙂